


Kingsmeet

by Triskaideka



Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Crack Treated Seriously, Cracktoberfest, Cracktoberfest 2018, Druids for the Ethical and Humane Treatment of Animals, Hallow's End, LLF Comment Project, M/M, Murlocs - Freeform, Raunchy humor, don't give me that look it's crack, frankly unethical forms of ethnographic research: do not attempt at home, harem fic if you squint, in which the sidhe courts somehow got summoned to Azeroth and are warring for control, minor digressions into hobbyist glaciology, minor gore, the rarest of cracktastic machine-generated rarepairs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-08-03 15:04:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16328285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Triskaideka/pseuds/Triskaideka
Summary: A cat may look upon a king, but what of the self-styled king of murlocs when word of his exploits among the famously unmanageable amphibian terrors reaches the Lich King himself? An invitation to the Court of Icecrown cannot be ignored...





	1. The Meet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As soon as I received the pairing, I imagined an alternate universe where the Summer and Winter Courts of faerie somehow got summoned to Azeroth and became the dominant factional divide. I was also informed that my participation in this madness was mandatory. (Although I don't usually post this quickly after writing; it's more like a six month lead time. And judging by the reaction, I guess our fearless coordinator didn't expect me to take the lesser-known half of the pairing seriously!)

Try to keep murlocs from listening in on private conversations. Just try it sometime.

Well, luckily for the kaldorei druid currently exerting himself under the assumed name of King Mrgl-Mrgl, monarch of the Winterfin murloc tribe of the Westrift on the western coast of the Borean Tundra, it wasn't that his merry band of murlocs had listened in that presented the problem so much as that they had overheard when it got weird. For one thing, the Lich King didn't throw Hallow's End events on a whim. For another, inviting _King Mrgl-Mrgl_ himself who never should have been on the Lich King's radar in the first place?

And the envoy, or herald, or whatever that lumbering thing was in courtly parlance, now gone, had left as much furor in its wake as a month's worth of murlocky doings.

Something in the Westrift smelled rotten, and for once it wasn't the fetid fish breath of his subjects.

When you got right down to it, though, there were just a couple of things that murlocs excelled at: mobbing potential victims, eavesdropping, and a willingness to make a target's life miserable when given the right impetus.

And really, secondhand gossip from a baby murloc toddling about who thought learning Common was the best game ever…the Lich King would be sorry he'd tangled with the Winterfins.

*

The Court of Icecrown drew equal amounts of awe and fear from denizens of this world, and like it or not, its effect on politics and the world at large could not be denied. Like its counterbalance in the Court of the Sun, currents flowed more deeply than the greatest river, and with more chances for the undertow to upend the footing of the unwary and sweep them away. Recruits were granted invitations to join one or the other of the courts for the least chance of upward mobility—and were ensnared for life.

And those who took a stand, made a statement, and remained neutral or tried to play one side off the other? Extinction, like the goblin cartels.

Bearing in mind these competing truths, all of which could upset his metaphorical run through a thicket of razor-edged plants, King Mrgl-Mrgl and his murloc entourage arrived on the specified date at the forbidding gates of the Citadel that crowned the northern glacier of Northrend. This close to the frost-bound plains of Icecrown and in direct spite of the ocean bordering it to the north, the air was dry. Bone dry. Very unlike the seaside edge of the tundra from which the Winterfin hailed.

It smelled like dead things left to rot, he thought, which they could not do in this environment. The wind would rob them of all moisture, leaving desiccated, pitiful lumps to be buried in the snow that stung his exposed flesh like wind-whipped sand. Nature encompassed more than just living things or vegetation, but little in this domain could be said to _live_.

Worse, when the towering guards of flesh-stripped bone admitted them to the antechamber, King Mrgl-Mrgl noticed that the death-scent had gained potency. Elune grant him strength.

As the movement of glaciers gave rise to the phrase “glacial pace,” so too were they kept waiting by the master of the dread Citadel. His charges grew hungry and unruly; holding back their natures took up more and more of the time he ambivalently wished to spend in the attempt to crack the puzzle before him. In the meantime, unliving creatures were paraded past in a show of force held in check, should he have dreamed of launching an attack from within his host's own stronghold.

Or because he'd taught the Winterfin about Hallow's End and couldn't have kept them from dressing up on the day of if he'd summoned all the twining vines in Northrend to hold them back. Limiting their costume choices, however…he almost smiled but joy was an emotion for the Court of the Sun. These mummers who revered the practice of conquering death were said to prefer more somber displays. He'd already attracted their master's attention; how much worse would it go to flaunt convention within their territory?

The might and magnificence of each successive wave strolling past for the express purpose of overawing him did little; he was already too keyed up to give them the reaction they wanted. A former member of D.E.H.T.A. who had felt his life's calling settle over him when he began to work with the murlocs, called before the Lich King's full grandeur by the latter's top generals? It surpassed belief.

Even he knew full well what the enforcers of this court looked like, and before him now stood no mere death knights. They were tall and pale, taller somehow even than the disguised kaldorei man in their foyer, but he knew them for the cousins on another branch of the elven family tree: quel'dorei. No one else sneered so expressively, for one.

Even the smallest of those under his protection could not fail to notice the cold stares. A chorus of angry gurgles went up as the Winterfin grew still more agitated. Even plain elves never summoned so much disregard on their own, enough so that he felt the shabbiness of his costume that might fool murlocs but never his own kind.

At last one spoke, and in a ringing, unearthly voice that he heard down to his bones, told him, “Silence those creatures or it shall be done for you.”

The shock of so commanding a tone issuing from these waifish creatures decked out in flowing shroud-like rags actually startled the Winterfin into a momentary silence—broken by angry growls when they gathered their wits once more.

Each side regarded the other in the ensuing jagged silence as if flash-frozen. Had runnels of ice defied gravity and crept up his ankles and over his toes, King Mrgl-Mrgl knew nature itself could not help him. As for the San'layn, for they could be none other, they seemed to take unending measure of him with their eyes.

“You will attend the master in his audience chamber. Your… attendants will be cared for in your absence,” said another of the looming former elves.

“No.” His vehemence surprised him as much as the San'layn.

“No?” they chorused, tasting the word in disbelief.

“Their fate and mine are the same. They will accompany me or you will tell your master the reason I could not accept his hospitality,” King Mrgl-Mrgl said.

His viscera quailed at their flat-eyed stares, growing no easier to bear by the moment. Yet if he folded here, everything would be lost. His charges counted on him to protect their interests while insatiable monolithic entities carved up the world between them; if he failed them, another resistance group would crumble.

Ages later, the San'layn came to some form of silent agreement. “Very well,” hissed their spokesman; “the master will deal with your recalcitrance personally. And may you choke on it.”

Once they had turned away, the spell was broken and he could usher his tiny army after their guides. Trusting household magic that took them into the bowels of the citadel, to judge by the ambient air temperature, almost broke his control over the Winterfin. A fine mess of fish heads that would have been.

“Attend ye his coming, for ye have partaken of his hospitality and bow before the master of this citadel,” intoned the San'layn as one. With no further warning, they exploded into a dark cloud of bats serving up gusts of wind in their wake and were gone in mere heartbeats.

That did it for the frayed nerves of the Winterfin. Gurgling in terror, they scurried to and fro. In moments, they would forget what costumes their brethren wore and begin attacking one another wholesale.

Into this chaos stepped the Lich King.

Stories concerning him did him no justice. He towered above even the heights the San'layn had reached, clad in dark armor that shadows clung to hungrily: an imposing figure whose very breath disobeyed immutable laws as it refused to leave a trail of frost where helm covered facial features. Whatever the ancient power that periodically chose to take up residence within a frail mortal body, it concentrated itself down to unbearable purity so that gazing upon him was more akin to standing face-to-face with Elune herself though without the protective veil of the Emerald Dream in between. Conversely, what glimpses he had had of the moon goddess had certainly not included a burgeoning terror threatening to spill over into his limbs and send him running for his life. How did the Lich King's vassals withstand it? Did swearing allegiance confer more subtle benefits?

The Winterfin sighted on their host and bayed for his blood.

It seemed the Lich King only took notice of the swarm of confused critters in Hallow's End costumes when they massed around his ankles and did their level best to stab through his boots to his flesh. Presuming he had flesh left below the neck; for all anyone knew, a skeleton beneath the armor provided locomotion through pure bull-headed spite. Claws and teeth admittedly did little damage to the armor, at least from his vantage point, and with a ponderous lack of speed that helm crowned with spikes tilted to peer down at the floor.

Once more frosty silence reigned.

An odd, muffled sound escaped the expressionless helm.

The clashing colors of the Winterfin costumes did evoke a certain nostalgia for the days when the dichotomy lay between Alliance and Horde rather than unfathomable beings commanding eldritch powers. The image of death knights and Thalassian rangers coming together as one to attack a foe who stood an order of magnitude taller than they was sweet, in a naïve way. As if a child's toy soldiers agreed to combine themselves into a single, unified fighting force for one brief, shining moment to bring about a world of perfect virtue.

And the tableau as a whole made this nigh deity _laugh_.

“We must talk, you and I,” said the Lich King.

“Let us talk, then, monarch to monarch,” King Mrgl-Mrgl replied formally.

“Oh, not here.” The Lich King flicked an indolent finger and the citadel moved around them. No more Winterfin furiously attacking an enemy they could not hope to defeat. No more insultingly small and out of the way audience chamber. Instead, he had brought them to some previously unseen portion of his domain—no. The room appeared more in line with the larger than life scale of the citadel but the kings had moved to another position and, as the icy mist cleared, his murlocs stood frozen around an open area in the center. As grisly centerpieces went, this qualified.

“It is Hallow's End, when the waning forces of summer's fire are extinguished and the rise of winter's might begins,” intoned the Lich King. “I offer you now a taste of my power over death and a place within my armies for you and yours. In return for serving me with loyalty, honor, and distinction, you may reap rewards beyond your imagining.”

From the shadows hugging the walls came a series of vassals who knelt but turned faces shining with admiration on their liege; their eyes held fanatical loyalty and a hungering desire that never let him out of their sight. He'd known these heroes' names before the world mutated into this travesty of its former self—Genn Greymane, a hulking human with age-silvered hair who once called himself king of a tiny nation of humans; the once-heroic Bronzebeard triumvirate, stout and steadfast in life, bloodied and still riddled with the suppurating injuries that had stolen their lives; another human, scarred but proud with his sword held ready in a duelist’s pose, once the ruler over a hopeful kingdom that had called itself Azeroth. Others, strangers to him in name, face, and even racial categorization, dozens strong. An unyielding, pitiless force.

The human kingdoms were the first to fall when Icecrown's power overran them, before the Court of the Sun summoned its opposite to slow the ravage. …the Lich King certainly liked to keep competing former royalty by his side, he realized. Like having the spoils of war on display to dishearten any who would think to attack him. As if he had deliberately aimed to destroy the preexisting power structures with not impersonal ruthlessness during his rise. 

“Your offer honors me, great king,” he said carefully.

Heads turned as if controlled by a central clockwork mechanism. These vassals seemed to draw no breath. Deathless, indeed, as rumor and grandiose claim alike made them out to be?

He had the sense that the Lich King regarded him soberly before he said, “You would spurn the gift of my patronage? Are you in league with the Sun King's court?”

“I am in league with no one!” King Mrgl-Mrgl protested.

“I brought you to this, my seat of might, where my throne and desires are one, on this potent night to offer you a place among my vassals and you mock me and lie to me.” The Lich King paced like a frustrated panther through this haranguing then stopped, abruptly, his tattered cloak swirling and settling around him like living shadow. “Perhaps I should show you a hint of what you're passing up…”

King Mrgl-Mrgl took this momentous occasion to marvel that his head remained attached and that the Lich King hadn't overridden him to force him to join his armies. The fight to divide the world in two was so recently enjoined, little in the way of legends had had time to build up around the mythic figures at the heart of the tumult. No one to date had escaped his wrath and remained safe from vengeance for long. But… it seemed he played by rules. Once you knew the rules, you could gain control of the game.

He had mere hours at most in which to discover secrets the likes of which had eluded far cleverer targets than he.

Again the Lich King waved a hand and the world around him did his bidding. Windy ramparts looking out on a scene of eternal snow and ice such as would make a man quit believing in summer replaced the unadorned citadel walls. Below, distant figures worked tirelessly and without heed of the driving sleet: building, sparring, manufacturing an unstoppable war machine limb by limb.

“Immunity to the cold. Enhanced strength. Sicknesses cannot fell my warriors, neither can wind nor snow nor sun blind them. Are they not perfect?”

“…no.”

“No?!”

“You asked with whom I am allied, and it is not the Sun King: it is life. Nature. I hear the call of the wild creatures. Your pets have nothing of the wild left to them. And you would add me to your collection without thought for my welfare, only your own. That makes the offer a perfect storm of poor governance.”

A dangerous precedent to set, baiting a creature of such cruelty with only guesses as to the rules regulating whether he survived this encounter.

“You would rather watch your petty little monsters grow old and sick, watch them die to starvation and war when you and they could live happily, comfortably within my court? You would presume to speak for them, as if their choices will matter in twenty years or a hundred? You would deny them such power as to grind their enemies beyond dust, to where history itself would forget they existed? You pitiful fool. I should bring you into the fold regardless of your feelings on the matter.”

At that moment, the puzzle pieces crystallized for King Mrgl-Mrgl. The Lich King could throw a childish fit and bluster and threaten all he wanted but at the end of the day, it all came down to choice. Without a definitive “yes,” he and the Winterfin tribe could not be made part of this world.

He saw a vision of murlocs as the Lich King wanted them to become, grown magically to even more monstrous proportions than the very naga who used them as cannon fodder had dreamed of: fleshly killing machines whose every step crushed the bodies of battalions underfoot, whose hunger raged unsated even in the thick of battle, whose very natures would be twisted away from anything Elune herself had imagined for them.

Judging from the cascade of frost pouring off the Lich King’s every filigreed armor ornament and tattered padding beneath like an angry mist, he knew his invitee had come to the only possible conclusion.

“So this is your answer,” the Lich King said. Icebergs smashed themselves together via the rage in his voice; newborn stars went cold all the while fearing his mighty gaze would be turned to them next. “There will be no respite. My armies will hunt you to the ends of the earth just for the sheer joy of seeing you brought low.”

“I understand,” King Mrgl-Mrgl just managed to say, for the fear had risen again with the frost and it tried its damnedest to choke him.

“The escaped stag of today becomes the centerpiece at the midwinter feast tomorrow.” Though the Lich King stood too far away for the whisper to conceivably reach King Mrgl-Mrgl’s ears, nevertheless he heard it for the promise it was.

He could give no defiant answer to so inexorable a dual threat and promise as this. The powers that caused the courts to orbit one another stood orders of magnitude over and above his own. Outclassed, doomed, et cetera.

“Perhaps it is providential that you are a druid. Tell me, my fellow monarch, are you affiliated with the Druids of the Antler? Are you going to give us a breath-arresting stag hunt when the hunting horns sound?” The Lich King sounded like he was merely musing aloud, but those barbs, those veiled insults—! How King Mrgl-Mrgl longed to transform and make short work of this petty tyrant.

“Perhaps we shall surprise you,” he said with equanimity that he didn't feel.

Here the Lich King chuckled.

Those who spent much of their time in the wild in shapeshift form often claimed that the instincts nature taught them often saved their lives. King Mrgl-Mrgl had never thrown away the trappings of kaldorei civilization and privately found living among the murlocs rough on his sensibilities as much as his skin, so it came as a shock when something in the back of his head bleated that he was now in mortal danger.

Too late, too late.

He went to duck but something had caught hold of his murloc costume and held him fast. He heard cloth tearing, a sound far less awful than that of flesh ripping, but far more dangerous to his cover. It seemed he spun in place, the world careening dizzily around him though all he could see in the twisted murloc suit was darkness.

Another rip, more final in its sounding off, and the Lich King’s minions had torn the head clean off it.

“Now let your ‘subjects’ see you for what you really are,” the Lich King thundered from somewhere nearby. Unseen. Like the ghost of vengeance for offers spurned. Elune preserve him from this!

“Uh, where is he?” asked one of the minions from next to King Mrgl-Mrgl.

“Inside the suit,” growled the Lich King.

King Mrgl-Mrgl had bided his time. He exploded out of the neck of his now-shredded suit, a primal scream bubbling from his throat. His unexpected leap bowled over the half-rotted minion and popped off its head with a satisfactory squelching noise, leaving the other minion frozen in surprise while holding the remains of the murloc suit.

“What is this?” the Lich King snarled. Even the ground beneath them trembled at the majesty of his rage but it was no barrier to King Mrgl-Mrgl’s murloc form.

“I am no Druid of the Antler,” he said through the razory maw. “I am a Druid of the Conch.”

His declaration of defiance seemed to have no effect on the Lich King’s end; the man’s veins must run with ice melt. And whatever governed the volitional parts of his minions’ minds, it didn’t seem to run that well either. He chalked it up to them remembering on some level what a fearsome adversary even a small group of murlocs could make—and he had dozens at his beck and call.

King Mrgl-Mrgl trumpeted the murloc call to battle and it was taken up by the Winterfin in their Hallow’s End costumes—with serviceably sharp although miniaturized spear points, halberds, and warhammers.

“Fool!” thundered the Lich King. “You cannot think to gain the upper hand within my citadel! My troops are deathless. You will be _made_ to serve for antagonizing your host!”

“Learn to take a polite refusal without going into a snit fit!” King Mrgl-Mrgl yelled back over the din.

“There is no escape! You violated the laws and agreements binding my consciousness to this land and you will pay for that insult!”

King Mrgl-Mrgl didn’t bother to continue the argument, since the Lich King quite famously never negotiated or allowed himself to be talked down once his anger was aroused. Instead, the king of the Winterfin sank his teeth into the neck of one of the San’layn while his army split into agile groups that could disarm and tear the limbs off their prey in a concerted effort that took mere moments. Whether the powers of the Lich King ran to reattaching losses like that, he neither knew nor cared; keeping half an eye on how the Winterfin fared while causing as much mayhem as a kaldorei-sized murloc could took the better part of his concentration.

It was a hopeless battle. The Lich King called upon reinforcements and his earlier conquests came to aid him. Those formerly human kings wielded their own dangerously sharp weapons, from a strange two-pronged sword with the cold blue heart of a star embedded in its blade that its owner split with practiced ease and dual-wielded excessively well to the graying, wolfish man’s dancing back and forth between shooting off a handgun at distant opponents while parrying those in proximity with a cutlass. As one, the Lich King’s servants lifted their heads and yelled for joy of battle, a sound to chill the blood of the stoutest opponent.

Murlocs had barely enough concept of self, let alone others, to daunt them in this most dire of circumstances. Defiant conch calls were bugled into the air.

It all came down to this moment. King Mrgl-Mrgl removed a tiny begemmed artifact from where it had been sunk into his flesh and healed over to keep the Lich King’s hounds from smelling the blood; in the heartbeat of time he had to himself before a new adversary came to face him, he threw it to the rimed cobblestones and smashed it underfoot.

He’d hoped for instantaneous effect when the plan was described to him, and those masters of the arcane did not disappoint. A full battalion of Thalassian foot appeared, weapons at the ready. The Rangers executed breathtaking flips to remove themselves from the fray, seeking higher ground from which to take aim. And, as the pièce de résistance, resplendent in the sort of armor that only kings could dream of, the master of the Sun Court himself stood his ground in the center, eyes shining but flat like burning copper glimpsed through clouded glass. Kael’thas Sunstrider raised his arms and sang out a word that boomed as would lightning.

All around the beleaguered Winterfin forces, those loyal to the Lich King screamed in pain as red-orange flames engulfed them.

“My king, the Sun Court attacks—!” cried one of the San’layn above the din.

Taking advantage of the confusion, King Mrgl-Mrgl blew the call to regroup with him as its focal point on his conch. For all that it appeared to a be battle, little in the way of blood slicked the ground. Already those loyal to Icecrown had begun to gather their wits; their pained screaming had stopped and he fully expected to see them lick their wounds. Not metaphorically. The rumors had called those undying soldiers berserker-like but he would have gone with _bestial_.

Orders flew between both monarchs and their men, the Lich King bellowing in terrific anger and the Sun King calling to his own with a voice like a tolling bell.

Once all of the Winterfin were accounted for, King Mrgl-Mrgl leaned in among them protectively, monitoring the action with narrowed eyes. All seemed in hand but the tide could reverse its course at any moment.

“Invincible, to me!” yelled the Lich King, and moments later a mummified imitation of a horse—with wings!—lifted off from the melee.

“Retreat to the inner halls! For the Lich King!” cried the San’layn, and the soldiers of Icecrown again gave that ululating cry that reached bone-deep into the listener to leave seeds of dread.

Within a few minutes, only the Winterfin and the Sun Court remained. The Sun King himself returned to King Mrgl-Mrgl’s side, saying, “I thank you for your part in this campaign, cousin. We have dealt his pride a sore wound and he’ll never expect the coming angle of our attacks.”

Knowing how much honor was meant in the casual use of ‘cousin’ left King Mrgl-Mrgl off-balance. Nevertheless, he gathered himself to say, “You have my thanks in return for using the intel and coming to the rescue of my charges.”

A roar of approval went up from throats of the Winterfin. In return, a tiny smile quirked the Sun King's thin, pale lips and he made a minute bow to them.

“Cousin, won’t you rethink your stance? You have brought honor to the Court of the Sun and your warriors would be a welcome addition to our ranks,” the Sun King said.

“I cannot, your majesty, for we brokered a deal and I would not see my end of the bargain reneged upon.” Nor did he wish to see his murlocs’ eyes turn that eerie shade of green; who knew what other changes those unnatural magics would cause upon their bodies and minds? Nature knew its course and was the better for it—none of this locked in unending battles with other interests nonsense.

The Sun King let out an insincere laugh and clasped forearms with him in preparation for farewells and leave-taking. “All deals can eventually be amended, if both parties desire it. You need only speak my name into a fire and I will hear,” he said.

King Mrgl-Mrgl bowed deeply to him and gathered the Winterfin with a short call. Their choice lay not in which side to choose but in doing the hard work to find other choices on the path; he had faith in the guidance of Elune that something would crop up, for the Moon Goddess had been around far longer than these upstarts and, nature willing, She would outlast and outsmart them.

A chorus of murloc good-byes and a nod backing up firm eye contact from King Mrgl-Mrgl heralded the Sun Court’s arcane magic sending them home. He looked out on the cloudy beach, listened to the wind whistling along the cliffsides, and felt the peace of his adopted home settle over him once again.


	2. A Boon, Unasked For

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first alternate ending...

_“There is no escape! You violated the laws and agreements binding my consciousness to this land and you will pay for that insult!”_

Before King Mrgl-Mrgl could find the time to draw back to safety and pray that his call for backup went through, and just when all seemed lost, the Lich King raised one massive gauntleted fist and--called for his soldiers to stand down? No white flag had gone up, and he was too stunned by this turn of events to do more than gape, and so the Winterfin continued their honestly ineffective attacks.

“You have proven both your prowess and battle and brought me genuine amusement,” the Lich King boomed. Murlocs slowed and stilled like frogs lurking in frozen mud. That, he supposed, was another way to bring them to order, though he disliked the use of showy force.

Belatedly he realized the Lich King was waiting for a response and so he called back, “And what does that mean for my subjects and myself?”

Again that near-silent amusement that shook the balcony like an earthquake. “It means that you are granted a reprieve. While I will surely collect you and your stable of fang-toothed ‘subjects’ in the future, for now I grant you leave to exit my lands in peace.”

A trap?

Worse, if he accepted and left, would the other party who had agreed to assist him exact a worse price for making what turned out to have been an unnecessary bargain? This cleft between the rock and the hard place wore on him more and more with each passing moment.

“That is… gracious of you,” he managed to say from the depths of a polite bow.

“You are confused.”

Damn straight he was confused.

The Lich King eyed him as if from an unreachable height. “My consciousness has not always been bound to this avatar, as you have heard. Boredom weighs upon ageless beings such as myself and my ancient adversary. Those passing mortals who surprise us are deserving of a small boon. Do you understand now, king of the murlocs?”

“I… I suppose I do?” King Mrgl-Mrgl found himself saying. “Erm. Thank you?”

“Do not thank me, mortal king. Gratitude has no place in these frozen halls. Rather, take your murlocs back to their hovels and bear in mind that the day will come when the Court of Icecrown comes to assert its claim on you.”

Gulping nervously, King Mrgl-Mrgl made a last deep bow, then called to the Winterfin as if they were children. Huddled in their center, he felt the terror of the near-miss equalize with the terror of what Kael’thas Sunstrider of the Court of the Sun would do to him. There was little to no chance he could pull another last-second reprieve out of his twisting nether, and by all accounts a painful reckoning would be the result.


	3. Legendary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A second alternate ending! If you've seen _Clue_ and _The Princess Bride_ , you can guess how this goes. ;D

“—I came out of it or I wouldn’t be here telling you the tale,” he said.

“…what?” asked his son and daughter in unison.

“You both looked as if you thought I had died back there and the Lich King raised me into undeath,” he explained.

They exchanged confused looks.

“Undead can’t procreate,” he added.

“Dad!”

“They can’t! If I had joined either of the courts before we banished them back to the Nether where they belong, neither of you would be here. Never would have met your mom, fallen in love, been swept off my feet…”

“Dear…,” gurgled his wife in reproof from the other room.

Their children bared their sharp teeth at him in an approximation of a smile, which a little voice in the back of his mind always noted looked a tiny bit creepy given their half-murloc heritage. As always, he ignored such silliness. “C’mon, tell the rest of the story, dad!” urged their son. “

Your mother,” he said soberly, “would skin me and wear my ears as jewelry if I told you the rest of the story and you couldn’t sleep over it.”

“Da-a-a-ad!”

“All right, all right. Where were we?”

“Just before the Sun King swept you off your feet!” his daughter lisped excitedly.

“That’s not how the story goes!” his son said, outraged.

She stuck out her lower jaw in a gesture of stubbornness and said, “He changes the story up every time. This could be the one where King Kael’thas of Quel’Thalas falls in love with him!”

The druid formerly known as King Mrgl-Mrgl hid a smile as he shushed the argument and picked back up where he had left off. Let her tell that version to her children, or her grandchildren; there was time for all of that now.

*

Later, after the children had gone to sleep and he had joined his wife in bed, she asked him point-blank, “You're not telling them about how he sent you frozen flowers every day for a year after carrying you off and doing unspeakable things to your bum?”

He kissed her fishy maw and replied, “My love, kaldorei have delicate mental states; and in our culture, one allows the children to grow up somewhat before poisoning their minds with the image of just their parents getting it on.”

She chuckled and rolled over to fall asleep, leaving him to ponder the fluke in fate that had saved him from becoming one of the Lich King’s unholy terrors.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From some PMs:  
> Me: The story of the Lich King's unrequited love for a random druid... *wheezes*  
> Auri: Who he banged after a wild night in a sidhe court right  
> Me: Depends on the version of the story you hear!  
> Auri: The dirty one

**Author's Note:**

> An earlier version of this cracktastically wild ride appeared in the Cracktoberfest 2018 PDF 'zine created by wolfandwild.
> 
> With thanks to the following inspirational works: Jim Butcher's Dresden Files, Seanan McGuire's October Daye series, and Julie Kagawa's Iron Fey series; also a dash of Jim Henson's _Labyrinth._
> 
> _Addendum, 6/2/19_ : This story is part of the LLF Comment Project, which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites and appreciates feedback, including:
> 
>   * Short comments
>   * Long comments
>   * Questions
>   * “<3” as extra kudos
>   * Reader-reader interaction
> 

> 
> This author replies to comments. Readers who would prefer not to receive a reply to comments, please state something like "no reply necessary" and I'll just stare with heart eyes at my inbox.


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